Amnesty International today urged the Belgian authorities
to act with all possible speed to implement fully, and as a matter
of priority, the recommendations which the (UN) Human Rights
Committee issued on Friday, 30 July, following its examination
of Belgium's human rights record.

In its Concluding Observations on Belgium's fourth periodic
report on its implementation of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, the Committee expressed concern about
a number of human rights issues, including continuing allegations
of police brutality, often accompanied by acts of racial discrimination.
It noted reports that investigations into such conduct were not
always carried out with due diligence and that, when sentences
were pronounced against officers, they were usually symbolic.
As well as instructing Belgium to put a stop to such police conduct
and to carry out more thorough investigations, the Committee
called for ill-treatment complaints lodged against the police
and any complaints lodged by the police against alleged victims
to be examined simultaneously.

Amnesty International noted that the Committee had to reiterate
its long-standing call for Belgium to introduce legislation guaranteeing
people in police custody the right to inform their relatives
of their detention and to have access to a lawyer and a doctor
from the first hours of their detention. The Committee said that
provision should be made for a doctor's examination to be available
at the beginning and end of the custody period.

The Committee was aware that, despite revised guidelines on
the treatment of foreigners during deportation operations, allegations
that escorting police
officers used excessive force had continued: it recommended more
thorough training and monitoring for officials carrying out such
operations. It was also concerned that rejected asylum-seekers
and unauthorized migrants awaiting deportation had been released
from detention centres for aliens by judicial order but then
confined to the transit zone of Brussels national airport, sometimes
for several months, "in precarious sanitary and social conditions"
("conditions sanitaires et sociales precaires"). The
Committee, considering such a practice to amount to arbitrary
detention which could result in inhuman and degrading treatment,
said that it should end immediately.

The Committee recommended changes to allow a more accessible
and effective complaints mechanism for inmates of detention centres
for aliens and called on Belgium to ensure that people considered
"inadmissible" to the country, and held in the so-called
INADs centre at the national airport, be informed of their rights,
including their right to appeal and to make a complaint.

Among its other concerns, the Committee pointed to the low
number of criminal and disciplinary penalties imposed on members
of the armed forces suspected of having committed human rights
violations in the context of the UN multinational peace-keeping
operation in Somalia in 1993. It also expressed concern about
the repercussions which the changes made to Belgium's universal
jurisdiction legislation in 2003 had for victims of grave human
rights violations under international law. It made relevant recommendations
to address these concerns, as well as prison overcrowding and
trafficking in human beings. It also urged that all possible
steps be taken to protect communities residing in Belgium from
racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim acts.

In information submitted to the Committee before its examination
of Belgium's human rights record, Amnesty International had focused
attention
in particular on its concerns about:

- alleged police ill-treatment and racist abuse on the streets
and in police stations and the absence of a number of fundamental
safeguards against ill-treatment in police custody;

- cruel and dangerous methods of restraint during forcible
deportation operations by air and the situation of people confined
to the transit zone of the national airport;

- difficulties faced by people wishing to lodge complaints
about police ill-treatment;

- obstacles to prompt and impartial investigations into complaints
of police ill-treatment and to the bringing to justice of those
responsible for such
human rights violations.

Amnesty International highlighted the need for urgent reforms
in these areas and recalled the detailed recommendations which
it had called on Belgian authorities to address as a matter of
priority in 2003. At the same time the organization drew particular
attention to:

- the apparently low level of criminal accountability for
human rights violations committed by soldiers participating in
the UN multinational peace-keeping operation in Somalia in 1993;

- legislation adopted in 2003 severely restricting the former
wide scope of Belgium's universal jurisdiction legislation, increasing
the possibility of impunity for the perpetrators of the worst
possible crimes;

- an increase in racist incidents directed against Jewish,
Arab and other Muslim communities.

For further information on Amnesty International's recent
concerns in Belgium, please see:

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